All posts by maddwolf

New In Theaters

The Passion of The Streak

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When the Game Stands Tall

by Hope Madden

The last time director Thomas Carter made a feature film, it was the inspiring true story of high school coach Ken Carter who, though leading an undefeated team, believed there was something more important to the future of his players than winning.

The filmmaker’s next effort really shows his range – because that movie was about basketball.

When the Game Stands Tall is the true story of Bob Ladouceur, probably the greatest high school football coach in history. He led his La De Salle Spartans to an unprecedented, quite likely unbreakable 151 game winning streak.

Carter is not known for his light hand at the helm. Indeed, this film has as manipulative and leading a score as anything since Remember the Titans, and the similarities don’t begin or end there. But he deserves credit for situating his story where he does, not focusing on the obvious victories, but mining the team’s more challenging, less glamorous time for the values that transcend the sport.

Jim Caviezel plays Ladouceur as a stoic, noble, righteous soul – because that is all Jim Caviezel is capable of. Luckily enough, it generally suits the role and he has other actors to appear humanlike around him.

The performances skirt cliché but are handled admirably. Laura Dern is the loving, ignored and concerned wife. Matthew Daddario is the coach’s son who just wants his dad’s approval, while Alexander Ludwig is the teammate whose volatile father only loves his son for the vicarious glory and accolades. It all sounds eerily familiar.

Carter also provides plenty of on-field play, and does a fine job of lensing it, though cinematic gridiron action may never look better than it did in Friday Night Lights. But that’s an altogether superior film. By comparison, When the Game Stands Tall looks downright naïve in its portrayal of athlete lives off the field, where they drink soda from bottles and make promise pledges with their chaste girlfriends in a town where fans are exclusively positive.

It’s an exceedingly passable product of a threadbare formula. It might even be enjoyable if Caviezel could muster the charisma necessary to carry the film. Unfortunately, Caviezel is no Sam Jackson or Billy Bob Thornton – and he sure as hell is no Denzel Washington- so his film feels more junior varsity than it might.

Verdict-2-5-Stars

New In Theaters

Modern Martyrdom

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Calvary

by Hope Madden

Has the Catholic Church so comprehensively betrayed the nation of Ireland that it would take the second coming of the Messiah to set things straight?

Maybe.

The ever more impressive writer/director John Michael McDonagh may not be trying to rectify the Church’s situation, nor is he bringing about revelation. Rather, he offers a microcosm of the fallout with insight, humor and compassion in Calvary.

Brendan Gleeson, as brilliant as always, plays Father James, a good priest. As the film opens, we sit inside the cramped confessional as Fr. James waits for the penitent on the other side to begin.

“I first tasted semen when I was seven years old.”

It’s not a confession so much as an announcement. The parishioner, whose face we never see, spent a childhood of horrifying abuse at the hands of a priest. But what good is it to kill a bad priest? If you want to really send a message, you kill a good priest.

He gives Fr. James a week to get his affairs in order and makes a date to take his life. “Sunday week, let’s say?”

It’s almost too ripe a premise, really, and yet McDonagh’s never stoops to melodrama, or even thriller. As Fr. James goes about his week tending to his parish and reflecting on what’s to be done about this threat, we get the unique perspective of a good, decent man with a collar.

The dry, insightful, exasperated humor that saturates McDonagh’s writing is a thrill to take in, and Gleeson has never been better. Never showy, without a hint of sentimentality, he brings this decent but hardly sinless man authentically to life.

As Fr. James’s week drags on, McDonagh and his ensemble slowly amplify the wickedness of the townsfolk, creating, finally, a real parallel between the plight onscreen and the allusion of the title. But nothing about Calvary is even moderately preachy.

The priesthood is not what it used to be – not for them or for us. And it may be too late to save the Catholic Church. But a filmmaker who can hold up a mirror to our troubled times and find weary humor and redemptive humanity in it is inspiration in itself.

Verdict-4-0-Stars

New In Theaters, Slider

It’s a Wonderful So-Called Life

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If I Stay

by George Wolf

 

Is it just for the cash, or do the people behind these teen romance fantasies actually believe they are being profound?

The latest, If I Stay, starts with a teenager saying “you know how when you meet someone, and they just, already are the person they’re meant to be?”

Excuse me but no, I don’t, because that’s nothing close to reality, it’s a line of melodramatic crap written by an adult for a teenage audience they know will lap it up and feel like this movie really “gets them.”

The same formula was seen just weeks ago in The Fault in Our Stars, and If I Stay, also adapted from a popular young adult novel, is only too happy to follow it.

The latest teen girl who doesn’t fit in is Mia (Chloe Grace Moretz). She’s got hip, rockin’ parents, but Mia prefers classical cello, and feels awkward about her talent.

If only there were someone who could make Mia realize how special she’s been all along?

This time his name is Adam (Jamie Blackley), and he’s the supercool Senior who already fronts a popular local rock band. After one casual glance at Mia practicing, Adam is smitten and confidently proclaims “You can’t hide in the rehearsal room forever…I see you.”

He sees her! Oh happy day! Now her specialness can be revealed!

The added emotional manipulation…,er, I mean plot twist.. comes in the form of a car accident that puts Mia in a coma. As she leaves her physical body and watches family and friends react to the tragedy, Mia is able to reflect on her young life and decide if she wants to stay in this world.

Director R.J. Cutler and writer Shauna Cross can’t bring one ounce of authenticity to their film. Everything feels fake – from Adam’s band to Mia’s family to the hospital staff – and sadly, that includes Moretz. Though she has often shown real talent, here she plays down to the material with a completely uninspired performance.

The young adult audience is more than just tomorrow’s Nicholas Sparks fans, but you wouldn’t know it from what plays at the multiplex. Too often, those movies teach boys to trivialize adolescence and teach girls to wallow in its drama. Meanwhile, more honest films such as It felt Like Love and Palo Alto struggle to get noticed.

Yeah, yeah, that’s Hollywood feeding the cash cow. I know it, but I don’t have to like it….or the maddening mess of a movie that is If I Stay.

 

Verdict-1-5-Stars

 

 

 

Fright Club

Fright Club Live: Calvaire (The Ordeal)

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The Ordeal (Calvaire) (2004)

This week’s Fright Club – 9pm at the Drexel Theatre in Bexley – unspools the 35mm print of Calvaire. It’s the first time the film has screened in Columbus, and we could not be more excited!

A paranoid fantasy about the link between progress and emasculation, The Ordeal sees a timid singer stuck in the wilds of Belgium after his van breaks down.

Writer/director Fabrice Du Welz’s script scares up the darkest imaginable humor. If David Lynch had directed Deliverance in French, the concoction might have resembled The Ordeal. As sweet, shy singer Marc (a pitch perfect Laurent Lucas) awaits aid, he begins to recognize the hell he’s stumbled into. Unfortunately for Marc, salvation’s even worse.

The whole film boasts an uneasy, “What next?” quality. It also provides a European image of a terror that’s plagued American filmmakers for generations: the more we embrace progress, the further we get from that primal hunter/gatherer who knew how to survive.

Du Welz animates more ably than most our collective revulsion over the idea that we’ve evolved into something incapable of unaided survival; the weaker species, so to speak. Certainly John Boorman’s Deliverance (the Uncle Daddy of all backwoods survival pics) understood the fear of emasculation that fuels this particular dread, but Du Welz picks that scab more effectively than any filmmaker since.

His film is a profoundly uncomfortable, deeply disturbing, unsettlingly humorous freakshow that must be seen to be believed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgB9JTdrXhg

For Your Queue

Vampires and Ghosts For Your Queue

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Oh glorious day, Only Lovers Left Alive is out today for your home viewing pleasure. What a fantastic film this is!

The great Jim Jarmusch reminds us that vampires are, after all, quite grown up and cool. His casting helps. A wonderful Tilda Swinton joins Tom Hiddleston (not too shabby himself) as Eve and Adam, vampires hanging around Detroit. Only Lovers Left Alive is a well thought-out film, a unique twist on the old tale, filled with dry humor, exquisite visuals, and wonderful performances.

And while you’d be wise to chase that with any Jim Jarmusch film, if we have to pick a favorite, it would be 1999’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai. This hypnotic urban poem on masculinity, violence and wisdom may be Jarmusch’s most likeable picture – as funny and dark as anything Tarantino has ever filmed, but with a surreal, dreamlike quality and a soul full of integrity. It’s a work of art, perhaps Jarmusch’s masterpiece.

Fright Club

Countdown: Best French Language Horror Movies

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French horror films are not for the squeamish. Hell, even Belgian and Canadian horror seems affected by the French flair for bloodshed and discomfort – the Grand Guignol, as they might say. And those crazy frogs may be making the very best in the genre right now. In celebration of this week’s live Fright Club, the brilliant and horrifying Calvaire (in 35 mm!), we count down the other 5 best French language horror films.

5. Sheitan (2006)

The fantastic Vincent Cassel stars as the weirdest handyman ever, spending a decadent Christmas weekend with a rag tag assortment of nightclub refugees. After Bart (Olivier Barthelemy) is tossed from the club, his mates and the girls they’re flirting with head out to spend the weekend at Eve’s (a not shy Rosane Mesquida). Way out in rural France, they meet Eve’s handyman, his very pregnant wife, and a village full of borderline freaks. The film is savagely uncomfortable and refreshingly unusual. Cassel’s performance is a work of lunatic genius, and his film is never less than memorable.  

4. Martyrs (2008)

This import plays like three separate films: orphanage ghost story, suburban revenge fantasy, and medical experimentation horror. The first 2 fit together better than the last, but the whole is a brutal tale that is hard to watch, hard to turn away from, and worth the effort.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbct9qWBSME

3. Irreversible (2002)

Gaspar Noe is perhaps the most notorious French filmmaker working in the genre, and Irreversible is his most notorious effort. Filmed in reverse chronological order and featuring two famously brutal sequences, Noe succeeds in both punishing his viewers, and reminding them of life’s simple beauty. There’s no denying the intelligence of the script, the aptitude of the director, or the absolute brilliance of Monica Bellucci in an incredibly demanding role.

2. Them (2006)

Brisk, effective and terrifying, Them is among the most impressive horror flicks to rely on the savagery of adolescent boredom as its central conceit. Writers/directors/Frenchmen David Moreau and Xavier Palud offer a lean, unapologetic, tightly conceived thriller that never lets up. Creepy noises, hooded figures, sadistic children and the chaos that entails – Them sets up a fresh and mean cat and mouse game that pulls you in immediately and leaves you unsettled.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9Djvi1-k0s

1. Inside (2007)

Holy shit. Sarah lost her husband in a car crash some months back, and now, on the eve of Christmas, she sits, enormous, uncomfortable, and melancholy about the whole business. Were this an American film, the tale may end shortly after Sarah’s Christmas Eve  peril makes the expectant mom realize just how much she loves, wants, and seeks to protect her unborn baby. But French horror films are different. This is study in tension wherein one woman will do whatever it takes, with whatever utensils are available, to get at the baby still firmly inside another woman’s body.

Fright Club

Fright Club Fridays: We Are What We Are

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We Are What We Are (2010)

Give writer/director Jorge Michel Grau credit, he took a fresh approach to the cannibalism film. His Spanish language picture lives in a drab underworld of poverty teeming with disposable populations and those who consume flesh, figuratively and literally.

In a quiet opening sequence, a man dies in a mall. It happens that this is a family patriarch and his passing leaves the desperately poor family in shambles. While their particular quandary veers spectacularly from expectations, there is something primal and authentic about it.

It’s as if a simple relic from a hunter-gatherer population evolved separately but within the larger urban population, and now this little tribe is left without a leader. An internal power struggle begins to determine the member most suited to take over as the head of the household, and therefore, there is some conflict and competition – however reluctant – over who will handle the principal task of the patriarch: that of putting meat on the table.

We’re never privy to the particulars – again giving the whole affair a feel of authenticity – but adding to the family’s crisis is the impending Ritual, which apparently involves a deadline and some specific meat preparations.

Grau’s approach is so subtle, so honest, that it’s easy to forget you’re watching a horror film. Indeed, were this family fighting to survive on a more traditional level, this film would simply be a fine piece of social realism focused on Mexico City’s enormous population in poverty. But it’s more than that. Sure, the cannibalism is simply an extreme metaphor, but it’s so beautifully thought out and executed!

The family dynamic is fascinating, every glance weighted and meaningful, every closed door significant. Grau draws eerie, powerful performances across the board, and forever veers in unexpected directions.

We Are What We Are is among the finest family dramas or social commentaries of 2010. Blend into that drama some deep perversity, spooky ambiguities and mysteries, deftly handled acting, and a lot of freaky shit and you have hardly the goriest film ever made about cannibals, but perhaps the most relevant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBkNz3_pzsw

New In Theaters

Every Dog Has His Day

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The Dog

By Christie Robb

Hollywood is captivated by bank robbers: John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, Patty Hearst, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid…

And John Wojtowicz, aka the Dog.

Not familiar? He’s the inspiration for the 1975 Al Pacino movie Dog Day Afternoon.

The Gateway Film Center is showing the latest of three documentaries on Wojtowicz, The Dog, starting Friday, August 22nd—the 42nd anniversary of the day Wojtowicz robbed a Chase Manhattan bank in order to finance his partner’s sex change operation.

The documentary offers the perspective of the progressively ailing Wojtowicz as well as those of his “wives” (both female and male), mother, eye witnesses, hostages, reporters, and gay rights activists. Directors Allison Berg and Frank Keraudren position Wojtowicz in the context of the burgeoning gay liberation movement, reminding the viewer how eye-opening this event was to many of the television viewers and local bystanders who watched the robbery and subsequent hostage negotiation unfold live. The Stonewall Riots had only happened three years previously.

Wojtowicz gave a good performance during the robbery—threating to beat up police for calling him a faggot, visiting with his adoring mother, having pizza delivered to the bank, throwing thousands of dollars out of the door, and French kissing a man at the bank threshold while still holding hostages. Wojtowicz was primed for theatricality; he went to a screening of The Godfather to psych himself up for the robbery.

And Wojtowicz, gives a good performance here. He describes himself both as a “romantic” and a “pervert” and narrates events leading up to the robbery and his life in its aftermath with a jovial demeanor that often jars with his subject matter. Several times I had to blink and process what just happened. (Is he narrating a butcher knife suicide attempt while smiling and wearing a puffer coat? Did he just offer a blowjob to a walrus?)

Berg and Keraudren leave it up to the audience to form their own conclusions about Wojtowicz. Romantic, willing to face prison to make his partner’s dream come true, as he maintains? Controlling, chauvinistic, sex addict, as interviews with his partners make it seem? A man clinging to his 15 minutes of fame? An ex-con with limited options, making a buck off the crime that prevents him from following his preferred career path in finance?

His story is indeed captivating and probably worth giving him another 15 minutes of fame.

 

Verdict-3-5-Stars

 

 

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Still Waiting for the Magic

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Magic in the Moonlight

by George Wolf

I don’t know how productive you’ve been this week, but Woody Allen finished three more screenplays before lunchtime on Tuesday.

The man just keeps cranking them out, which is good, because the sooner there’s another charmer like Midnight in Paris, the sooner we can just forgive the dud that is Magic in the Moonlight.

Allen continues the world traveling we’ve seen in his recent scripts, setting the latest in France near the end of the roaring twenties.

Master illusionist Stanley (Colin Firth) has agreed to help his old friend and fellow magician Howard (Simon McBurney) in the quest to expose a scam artist. A young cutie named Sophie (Emma Stone) has been passing herself off as a clairvoyant, completely captivating a rich American family living on the French Riviera.

It seems Howard has observed Sophie’s “gift” in action, and hasn’t been able to pick up on the tricks she’s employing, but Stanley, full of smug conceit, is confident he’ll expose her in no time.

The rest goes pretty much as you’d expect, which would be fine if the film delivered even a hint of what the title promises. There’s no magic here, regardless of how hard Stone and Firth try to muster it.

It’s more contrived than charming, more forced than fun. Character development is kept to the bare minimum, apparently to leave more room for banter that snaps loud and says very little.

Throughout his storied career, Allen has often played with different genres and styles of filmmaking, and even when the results fall short, the ambition is commendable. Magic in the Moonlight is his attempt to marry the wit of Noel Coward with the inspiration of George Bernard Shaw.

OK, worthy idea, but the result feels like he lost interest half way though.

So did I.

 

Verdict-2-0-Stars

 

 

For Your Queue

Tom Hardy 2-fer For Your Queue

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This week offers several excellent options for your queue, but the best among them is Locke. So let’s all get geeked for the upcoming Mad Max: Fury Road  by taking in a couple of flicks from one of this generation’s most explosive, most talented actors, Tom Hardy.

A masterpiece of utter simplicity, Locke tags along on a solo road trip, the film’s entirety showcasing just one actor (the incomparable Hardy), alone in a car, handling three different crises on his mobile while driving toward his destiny. It may sound dull, and it certainly can be challenging, but it may just restore your faith in independent filmmaking.

While you’re queuing up, look for the film that best encapsulates the ferocious talent that is Tom Hardy, Bronson. Director Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive) chose a path of blatant, often absurd theatricality to tell the tale of Britain’s most violent, most expensive inmate. In Hardy’s bruised and bloodied hands, Bronson can be terrifying and endearing inside the same moment. Hardy finds a way to explore the character’s single minded violence, pinpointing the rare moments of true ugliness. The rest is just a guy beating his chest against his own limitations. But when this guy beats his chest, it’s usually with the bloodied stump of what was once a security guard or four.